Tag Archives: coc

New departure

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The COC is usually tighter than a duck’s arse when it comes to revealing information about future seasons so it was really quite surprising to find the leaflet illustrated below in last night’s programme.  It’s not exactly a secret of course.  I actually expected Falstaff to be in this season’s line up with the Verdi bicentennial and all.  It’s pretty well known that Gerry Finley will star and I have a pretty good guess on the Nanetta.

It’s an interesting ploy to piggy back on the Met HD season this way.

falstaff

What harbour shelters peace?

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Readers of this blog will likely know that Peter Grimes is a very special opera for me.  I’ve watched it live and on recordings a lot.  I think about it a lot troo so the chance to see it live is rather special.  It’s even more special when it’s done as well as at the Four Seasons Centre last night in the opening performance of a new run of Neil Armfield’s much travelled production, revived here by Denni Sayers.

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Old Ben has gone missing

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It’s official.  Tony Dean Griffey will sing the title role in tomorrow night’s opening performance of Peter Grimes at the COC, replacing an indisposed Ben Heppner.  The party line is that Ben will sing the remaining performances.  We will see.  Certainly Tony is scheduled to start a run of Fledermaus in Houston on the 25th and the last Grimes is on the 26th.  This story isn’t over.  Whatever else goes down, let’s hope Ben makes a speedy recovery from whatever ails him.

Changes afoot

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There are some interesting tidbits scattered through the latest edition of the COC’s house magazine Prelude.  They include a return to a six production season from 2014/15 (the last few years there have been seven).  This is intended to free up cash to make the remaining productions more ambitious (as well as stem what was shaping up as an increasingly dodgy financial position).  There is talk of “more grand opera” and “a great amount of Wagner on the COC’s horizon”.  It’s also very clear that the current model of “challenging” productions (including Tcherniakov’s Don Giovanni) and encouraging established stars to make role debuts in Toronto will continue.

All of this makes sense to me from a business and an artistic viewpoint.  Going more populist in search of a probably non-existent fringe audience seems to me wishful thinking at best.  Giving the core audience a high quality product, aimed at those with real interest in the form, mixed with fiscal prudence just feels like the right way to go.

Heppner out of COC Grimes?

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griffeyAnthony Dean Griffey was flown into Toronto yesterday to replace Ben Heppner in the final dress rehearsal of the COC’s Peter Grimes which opens on Saturday.  There has been no official announcement of a cast change but I’m making enquiries.  Reports from the dress say that the einspringer was splendid.

This in from the COC… “Yes, it’s true that Anthony Dean-Griffey sang the dress rehearsal. Ben wasn’t feeling well and since he knows the role so well, he was resting up for opening night.”

The discounting has started

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boheme upsellWith two nights to go to the start of the COC’s season the discounting has started already.  The deal is buy tickets for any two other operas and get free tickets for La Bohème.  The deal is good for performances on October 16, 25, 27, 29 and 30 and appears to apply for all but the cheapest and most expensive seats.  The website isn’t exactly splashing the news around.  You will only see the offer if you try to buy tickets for La Bohème or if you just happen to be poking around to see how well things are selling.

Here we go again

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Yesterday saw the first of this season’s free concerts in the Richard Bradshaw Amphitheatre.  As has become the norm it featured the singers of the COC’s Ensemble Studio.  This year it was dedicated to the memory of the late Lotfi Mansouri and included a couple of short tributes to him.

Six of the Ensemble’s singers are new this year, as is the sole pianist, so these were mostly singers I haven’t heard a lot of.  I’ve also observed how much members of the Ensemble Studio develop in the programme and last year we had a solid group of third years with a few new entrants.  The balance has shifted to the other extreme and so no surprise that yesterday we heard more potential than polish.

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Front (l – r): Clarence Frazer, Sasha Djihanian, Danielle MacMillan, Michael Shannon
Middle (l – r): Gordon Bintner, Aviva Fortunata, Claire de Sévigné, Cameron McPhail
Back (l – r): Andrew Haji, Charlotte Burrage, Owen McCausland
Photographer: Karen Reeves

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Ben Heppner at Toronto Reference Library

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heppnerLast night’s event in the Star Talks series at the Toronto Reference Library involved Richard Ouzounian interviewing Ben Heppner who is in town to sing the title role in Peter Grimes.  It was a very genial interview; no tough questions about elitism or whether opera was dying.  Rather it was very much the tale of the kid from Dawson Creek who beats Renee Fleming and Susan Graham in the Met auditions and becomes a superstar.  It was curiously like Desert Island Discs without the music.

There were a couple of interesting stories.  The best concerned Heppner and Richard Jones’ production of Lohengrin (available on DVD/Blu-ray with Jonas Kaufmann in the title role).  It’s the one where Lohengrin and Elsa build a house then Lohengrin burns it down.  Well it turns out the the three year old Ben Heppner managed to burn the family home down and during the dress of Lohengrin had a pretty strong repressed memory reaction at the point where he had to set the cradle alight.  It says a lot for his professionalism that the first night went off without incident.

I did get to ask him for his views on different kinds of tenor singing the role of Grimes.  After all it was created for one of the most ethereal operatic tenors ever but ids frequently sung today by full on heldentors.  He said he didn’t think the voice was as important as how fully the singer inhabited the character and singled out Philip Langridge in that regard.  I have to agree with him.  I love Langridge’s Grimes.  It’s a real pity the video recording of it is so awful.

Peter Grimes runs for seven performances at the COC starting October 5th.

Staging Handel’s oratorios

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Ambur Braid and Chris EnnsI’ve been watching a few staged versions of Handel oratorios recently and I’ve come to the conclusion that, in general, I prefer them to his Italian operas.  It’s not just that they have really good plots they are also musically much more interesting than the operas.  For the stage Handel stuck pretty firmly to the conventions of opera seria.  Da capo aria succeeds da capo aria and only occasionally does a chorus or a duet break out and that bit is often the musical highlight of the piece, to my mind at least.  Think of Io t’abbraccio in Rodelinda; surely the highlight of the whole work.  In the oratorios Handel seems to feel much freer to use multiple forms and, of course, he writes magnificent choruses.  Continue reading →

More season announcements

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suzieleblancToronto Masque Theatre has announced the line up for the 2013/14 season.  There are three main stage productions.  First up is Patrick Garland’s now classic play Brief Lives, based on John Aubrey with song and music from 17th century London. Second is a revival of Tears of a Clown, under a new title, Arlecchino Allegro. Finally, there is a reinterpreted classic from the world canon teamed up with a contemporary interpretation in the Myth of Europa.  Details for the shows are as follows:

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